The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Saturday asked Captain Amarinder Singh to clarify his role in advising then prime minister Indira Gandhi in the run-up to Operation Bluestar. Capt takes a dig

The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Saturday asked Captain Amarinder Singh to clarify his role in advising then prime minister Indira Gandhi in the run-up to Operation Bluestar.

"Amarinder was among the key advisers of Indira Gandhi during that period… He must state categorically if he no longer considers Operation Bluestar a crime committed by Indira Gandhi against the Sikhs and why he had gone back to the Congress that ordered it," senior SAD leaders Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and Balwinder Singh Bhunder said in a press conference here.

The SAD leaders said Gandhi was guided by "influential Sikh Congress leaders from Punjab" to attack the holiest of holy shrines of the Sikhs in a bid to marginalise the SAD and its leaders. "The name of Amarinder Singh as the closest aid and adviser of both Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi has come as one of the key influences on Gandhi's decisions on Punjab, a fact never contradicted even by Amarinder himself to this day," Dhindsa and Bhunder said, asking the Congress leader to tell people of Punjab why he went back to the party which rolled army tanks in the Golden Temple to demolish the holy Akal Takht.